Searchers

Take the lift down to see your old friend, but beware! Therefore this article may contain spoilers remain unmarked! Do not go any further if you choose not to read or view spoilers before playing the game first.

Contents

Bestiary

Description

The Searchers resemble human-based figures entirely made of black ink, and are roughly about the same size of Henry. They have very smooth flexible bodies, elongated arms, and the lower part of their bodies seem to melt into giant puddles of ink. Whenever they crawl to move, they leave ink trails behind.

Their ghoulish, human-like faces sport a gaping mouth, a protruding jaw, two indentations in the place of eyes, and broad movable eyebrows.

Behavior

They were first witnessed as puddles of ink, bubbly slime as their idle state, giving Henry an earlier sign that they will soon about to spawn upon approaching. Those slime will still remain after killing the Searchers.

When spawned, the Searchers start following Henry quickly to attack. Upon hitting them with a weapon, they will collapse into ink and disappear, allowing Henry to continue. On occasions, they can come in packs. Sometimes, a Searcher can unexpectedly spawn to startle the player in alarm.

However, the Searchers can be very dangerous if they crowd against Henry in a large pack. If Henry gets attacked by them enough, Henry will be killed, sending him straight back to the Bendy statue to respawn.

Strategy

If Henry manages to outrun the Searchers or get inside the Little Miracle Station, they will vanish and will only reappear if Henry returns near them. This may be difficult since they are almost as fast as Henry.

Appearances

The Searchers makes their first appearance as the only main enemies in the second chapter. They are also the first encountered enemies. Their moaning sound is first heard when opening the entrance to the Music Department hall after completing the first puzzle. The Searchers starts to become active after enabling the "POWER" switch from the stairwell to activate all the lights from the areas.

The second wave of Searchers are later encountered in the recording studio after activating the first ink flow from Sammy's sanctuary. After wiping the second wave out, another Searcher can also spawn in the band area and even inside Sammy's sanctuary.

One Searcher is later encountered inside the infirmary while Henry is attempting to activate the second ink flow.

Finally, they are encountered in the ritual room after the murder of Sammy, responsibly by "Bendy".

The Searchers reappear in the third chapter. They spawn in every location (except the safe house and both locations on Level 14) soon as Henry starts to solve several tasks for "Alice". Once killed, the Searcher will respawn if Henry goes back to the area after few minutes.

On Level 9 during the task of defending "Bendy's" room from the Butcher Gang enemies, the Searchers spawns rapidly around the inner sanctum if Henry walks closer to the area after the bridge, making the battle more frisky yet dangerous.

Trivia

Similarly to Sammy and Alice Angel, the Searchers have their own soundtrack of the same name.

The Searchers had their own Patreon named "The Searcher Dance Party", where Mike Mood showcases their beta models as rag dolls doing random things. Due to theMeatly Games' Patreon account disabled, the post was deleted.

The current quality of the Searcher's official rigged model is unofficially released onto Steam's Source Filmmaker Workshop and included in the second SFM pack along with "Bendy", Piper, Striker, Fisher, the Swollen Searcher, and the Projectionist's model.

The Searcher has an unused animation of them crawling without tilting their body side to side.

Beta version of the Searcher.

Their model from Chapter 2's first release is slightly different, and they are slower and more fragile. Each hand possesses three fingers instead of five, with two longer ones closely resembling a tuning fork. Their arms seem to also be thinner than the new model. Their face also seems to be painted partly with grayish-white colors (yellowish-brown due to the game's lighting). They appear to be slightly shorter than Henry. Instead of crawling, they just move in a similar fashion to the slug's movement while swaying their arms.

The early version of their "idle" model appears to look like chunk of clay instead of slime, and killing the Searchers will cause their ink chunk shrink away. They were removed upon Chapter 3's release but readded with newer design for the release of Chapter 4 update.

They collapse into pieces whenever they damaged Henry, or even simply running into obstacles or walls. Afterwards when getting killed, the glob-like masses where the Searchers spawned from slowly shrink into the floor and dissipate.

One each can be spawned from the entrance of Sammy's office and near from the hallway between the Music Department hall and the recording studio while Henry is preparing to solve Sammy's music puzzle.

There is a bug when pausing the game during the encounter, the Searchers' animation will freeze but still moving to make them "slide" towards Henry before collapsing into pieces when close enough. Moments later afterwards, the Searchers will respawn but their models are not showing up, leaving their ink trails only visible.

From Chapter 2's game files of the pre-update before Chapter 3's release, there are several unused audio files of the Searchers' dying moans, meant to occur when killing them. These sounds never occur in-game however. Upon Chapter 3's release while the Searchers' models are updated, one of the unused death audio files is recycled for newer said sounds.

After activating the pump switch from Sammy's office, if bringing one Searcher (such as from the infirmary) to the Music Department then get hit by Sammy, the Searcher will keep attacking and still receiving Henry damage. Henry will then die with enough damage, but will teleport to the ritual room with Sammy rather than the Bendy statue while the ink effects for respawning still occur. This bug also happens with the Miner Searcher.